Summer Bacon sent me an email July 1st, 2018. I am, with permission, posting it here verbatim in that I believe it will provide context for the beautiful and (for me) deeply moving note she wrote in 1989.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you, dear friend.

Thomas Jacobson

The Email

July 1, 2018

Hi Thomas (and Connie!),

I was really depressed this morning, and went back to bed after eating breakfast. I couldn’t sleep, but spoke to Spirit about everything that was going on with me. I specifically spoke to Dr. Peebles for awhile. All of a sudden, as I was laying in bed chatting with him, I noticed a basket on a shelf. I was drawn to it, as if in trance. I pulled out some papers from the basket, and found myself holding a handful of handwritten pages upon which I had written all about what it was like to know you as a person and trance medium, and what I experienced when you went into trance. I think you might like it. I know you have a hard time with compliments, so be ready to read truth about yourself from someone else’s perspective. There are a couple of little things that might not be so complimentary, but I’ll leave them in for levity. 😉 I was trying to show that you were a very real person with an extraodinary talent.

I wrote it in 1989, when you were doing the Gathering Place at the Encino Women’s Club. My writing was a bit melodramatic back then, but it was honest.

I just typed it up today. If you’d like to read it, please let me know and I will send it. If you don’t want to read it, I completely understand.

I hope you two are having a wonderful, relaxing weekend.

Love,

Summer

P.S. After I read it, I wasn’t so depressed anymore. :)

The Note

1989

I am in absolute awe of Thomas Jacobson. As my friend, he is fun to tease, and and he’s a bit of a chauvinist and that ticks me off sometimes, and he teases me back, and he buys drinks for his friends, and loves hockey (how could he??) and eats lobster bisque, and gallons of hot fudge sundaes, and he says some incredibly wise and challenging things, and has a silly habit of interjecting comments into a conversation that he has only been half listening to. He’s a lot of fun, and he’s so loving and kind to animals, and has great taste in art, and he’s so loving and kind to people, and sometimes he’s really tough on them, too. He’s a lot like a guy that you’d really just like to know, because he’s a real regular guy, and just darn nice, and cute too, with a hearty, throaty laugh that gives way to ripples of giggles, and his blue eyes sparkle and dance with sincerity that feels safe and friendly and honest. Yes, he’s human, and I guess that makes me feel even more in awe of Thomas Jacobson, because he has a skill that is so extraordinary, beyond anything that could ever be accomplished by the human body, that is infinitely more awe inspiring than shooting a little black puck across ice and past a growling goalie. What Thomas accomplishes is done by the power of his soul.

Thomas is an enigma; no doubt a better word has yet to be invented to describe him. He is a Trance Medium. He has this remarkable ability to vacate his body and allow another disembodied being, or Spirit, to enter it. Yeah, you gave your mom flowers on Mother’s Day, you bought your boyfriend a Sony Walkman for his birthday, you gave your best friend’s newborn a $100 savings bond—but, would you let them “borrow” your body for awhile to use it to do and say anything they choose, with no editorial rights on your part? Think about that for a moment. Your mom would use your vocal cords to say anything, and use your body in anyway she chose. Sure, you love your mom, but would you love to have some of those biased and irrational words of hers come out of your mouth? Or, how about that funny habit of hers, where she kind of scrunches up her face in a crude manner and then blinks her eyes rapidly when she’s in deep thought? Would you want her to do that using your face? Okay, so you might say that it wouldn’t matter, if she was just borrowing your body for awhile, and you could come back to it. What difference would it make? Well, suppose she was inside your body, and did these things in front of your close friends, and their friends. And, suppose that some people (even your best friend) did not believe that your mom could do this, or that it were possible for you to vacate your body. They’d end up thinking that you mother’s words and actions were attributed to you! “Maybe,” they’d think, “Maybe this guy’s just crazy, or maybe schizophrenic or something.” Think about what it would really be like trying to convince someone that this vacating the body stuff was actually a real occurrence. No easy task, indeed.

Now, that’s an example of vacating your body and letting your mom “borrow” your body for awhile. But, try to imagine leaving your body and opening it up to anyone, any spirit known or unknown. That would take greater courage than trusting that your Porsche wouldn’t be permanently stolen if left in any neighborhood with the doors unlocked, a key in the ignition, and a sign posted that reads: “Porsche available to anyone who wants to borrow it. Please return it by 8:00pm, as I’ll need it for my date. Thanks!” If your car gets stolen, you can get another one, or walk or take the bus. But, if your body gets permanently possessed by another spirit, where are you going to live? Well, the thought of frolicking free and unencumbered by a body might seem glorious, but then, how to you attend that Kings’ hockey game at 7:30 tomorrow night?

Thomas’s courage is one reason why I find myself so captivated by his channeling. He is such a living, breathing symbol of how man and spirit are never separate; how the tangible and the mystic realms are bridged; how science can be more religious, and religion more scientific. The drama and magic of Thomas’ channeling is a challenging experience, because it does not fit the traditional presentations of Spirit. He is no pulpit pounding, fear inspiring evangelist, and he is not a wirey, sprout-eating guru who refuses to wash his hair with anything but Rosemary Rinse. There is no hoopla, there’s just Thomas…and a chair.

Thomas is a very big man, and I was struck by the irony of how such a big man could walk with such grace, whisking across the floor with vitality—his lightness of motion a striking contrast to his frame. At the Gathering Place, where he channels once a month in the humble and friendly setting of the Encino Women’s club, he stands on a small stage, sparkling with friendliness from head to toe, squinting at the lights, trying to see faces in the audience, trying to make warm, human contact across the sometimes uncomfortable and weird atmosphere of the audience as observers and he as the specimen. I ache to think of the handful of people who come to the Gathering Place like people flock to see the circus freaks. Yet, Thomas laughs and talks, and challenges and connects, and trusts, and allows for and learns from the worst of it, and is invigorated by the best.

Then, when the talking is done, he settles into “the chair” and the process of surrender has begun. He surrenders to his audience when they become anxious to hear the wisdom of Dr. Peebles come through him. He gives a heavy sigh, and settles comfortably in the chair; I feel as if his sigh becomes the breath that I catch in my own throat, and I become respectfully rigid as he disrobes himself spiritually. The Kings games, the beer, the bisque, his girlfriend Connie, his friends, his earth, all become secondary to this act of love, this drama of intercourse between man and spirit; for this very big man becomes even bigger than his body—that thing which is closest to him of all—his love for the things and people who are close to him is extended to all things and people near and far, encompassing places and planes of existence he may never have known.

Then it happens; he vacates his body and his body jolts as the exchange of energies between man and Spirit takes place. I can only imagine the magic and beauty of the experience from Thomas’ perspective; like making love with someone in the physical form and feeling like words and touch cannot adequately express the depth of love, and then wishing you could be inside of that person’s mind, living and dreaming and feeling exactly as they do, joining in an orgasm of understanding, and then—just imagine!—it happens, it really happens, with a tremendous jolt you become one in love, and yet you do not lose your own identity in the process.

And, Dr. Peebles speaks, and I feel transported. I feel that Thomas is no longer in the room. The personality of each is so different and so special and cherished in itself. Again, the drama and magic of the moment is captivating. There, on stage before us, is the body of Thomas Jacobson, with Dr. Peebles’ spirit inside. And, here sitting in the audience, is my body with me still inside, but when Dr. Peebles speaks it feels as if he is inside of me too. His clarity of understand, his great compassion, and his loving and brilliant words touch me deeply, and stir me to life. Dr. Peebles can be a gentle but rough “lover”—a word here and there is like a kiss that heals a wound, and other words feel like leeches and I want to pull them off, but soon learn that they actually suck the poisons from my body, mind and spirit if I can endure a bit of pain. This performance by man and Spirit is full of laughter, and tears, of tenderness and firmness, of disbelief and understanding. Spirit becomes the audience, and the audience suddenly has the voice of Spirit as the individuals who ask questions begin to reveal their own brilliance.

The separation between man and spirt ceases to exist, the gap is closed by the end of Dr. Peebles’ visit with us, and as he prepares to leave, the curtain is not drawn between the stage and the audience, but instead closes around us and the rest of the universe like a blanket. All the world, and all the universe, is a stage, and we are all players in it. “We” man, and “we” Spirit. With a final “God Bless You, each and every one,” from Dr. Peebles, the legs of Thomas Jacobson begin to tremble as if “the Doc” must regretfully shake himself free of Thomas’ body. Then, in the finale is the passing of the torch, if you will, the breath of life as it is passed back from Dr. Peebles to Thomas. As I let out my breath at the sight of Thomas’ return, Thomas inhales as if the breath he takes is his first. His eyes fly open wide like a newborn child, and with that sudden beautiful realization that he has stood naked and vulnerable in front of us all, comes the final stroke of the pen as in a Shakespeare play—he blushes.

That is why I am in awe of Thomas Jacobson. It is that act of surrender, more than the words of Dr. Peebles, that clues us in to the answers. Surrender to life. Surrender to that journey to your heart. Surrender to the change, to the joy and pain, to the diversity of the world that makes it such an unequivocally fascinating and challenging place for us souls to live and learn. Surrender to the love that comes to you and through you. Surrender and give of yourself to the world with faith and trust and bountiful compassion, and you will find yourself as the adventurer who can step out into the blackest hole and come out again unscathed and renewed.

[Summer Bacon]

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